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tv   Rock Center With Brian Williams  NBC  December 6, 2012 10:00pm-11:00pm EST

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huh? you should see november! oh, yeah? giving you more. now that's progressive. call or click today. - officer skorggel. - i pulled her over a tammy swanson for driving erratically. ran the plates, saw it was your car. figured it was stolen. - hey, ron, why don't you get me out of these handcuffs, so i can put you into these handcuffs. - yes, and officer, why don't you take off those handcuffs? i want this to be a fair fight. - officer, did you see any sign of a passenger? [thumping from trunk] - ron!
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- there we go. - hey! [thumping] help. tonight on "rock center," apple's new leader tim cook gives his first television interview since the death of steve jobs. tonight, he talks about the final gift from the founder. he responds to apple's critics, why can't you be a made in america company? and hints about what may be the next big thing. >> we're living the jetsons with this. when you turn on the tv -- >> television is still television. also tonight, the conversation every family should have, the decision faced by every family. so why do so many get it wrong and regret it? harry smith gives us a very
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intimate look inside one place where they're trying to change that. >> give me as much time as i can get. but keep me comfortable. also tonight, ann curry travels to new zealand to visit film director peter jackson. can his hotly anticipated new movie "the hobbit" possibly live up to "the lord of the rings"? >> one of my favorite characters. >> ann goes inside his magical world. >> now we're really in trouble. >> yeah, where are we looking? oh, dear. >> that and more tonight as "rock center" gets under way. good evening and welcome to "rock center." the impact of apple on life in america is well established by any standard. they have changed our electronics and our culture and whether you're the owner of apple products or not, you've got to admit that much. as much as any company can be about one guy, apple was steve jobs.
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and now that steve jobs is gone, apple is run by tim cook. he hasn't talked a whole lot about his life or his business. he certainly hasn't done so on television until now. apple is famously secretively and while it took months of meetings and negotiations, tim cook agreed to be interviewed and we met up at one of the places apple has transformed. nobody remembers the guy who came after thomas edison. and nobody seems to recognize tim cook as we walked together across the teeming floor of grand central station. i like being anonymous. >> as we walk, we're surrounded by examples of what apple has done to our society, both good and bad. people now live their lives while listening to the communicating with members of
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>> and who else would have us believe they intend to be the one company that reverses hundreds of years of business history by becoming the one company that never fades away into irrelevance? you realize if you're a company that can keep amazing us consumer, if you're a company that can stay fresh without an
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expiration date, you'll be the first company ever to do that. there is a cycle, that circle of life, life and death, and you're trying to buck that trend. >> don't bet against it. >> we started our day with tim cook in lower manhattan at another of his 250 apple stores where we began the questioning with what's different about it. how are you not steve jobs? >> in many ways. one of the things he did for me that removed a gigantic burden that would have normally existed is he told me on a couple of occasions before he passed away to never question what he would have done, never ask the question, what steve would do, to just do what's right. >> doing right has done well for tim cook so far. he's had a good first year on the job.
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the company's stock is up about 45% during his tenure. and think about this, he's already presided over the rollout of three ipads, two iphones and three macs. >> it is beautiful. stunning. >> you've got guys whose job it is to get this mesh right, to get this curve right. >> to get it precisely right. >> in fairness, however, this past year, they haven't gotten everything precisely right. >> weather. >> nice weather -- >> starting with siri, the small woman who lives in your iphone. the service amazed all of us at first, but then came under criticism for not being perfect or as consistently amazing as steve jobs wanted it to be. then there are the maps. iphones used to come with google maps until they set out on their own. but apple's version wasn't quite ready for launch. it lacked some critical street smarts.
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and in those early days, god help you if you went anywhere near the brooklyn bridge or the hoover dam. it was a rare and public embarrassment and cook fired two top executives in charge. how big of a setback was maps? >> it didn't meet our customers' expectations and our expectations of ourselves are even higher than our customers'. however, i can tell you, we >> and you said good-bye to some executives? >> well, we screwed up. and we are putting the weight of the company behind correcting it. >> as for the iphone 5 itself, they have flown off those perfect apple store shelves. but buyers of the iphone 5 soon discovered they had to buy something else, none of the old power cords work on the new equipment. why did we have to buy new cords for this?
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>> as it turns out, we had a connector that we used for a decade or more. >> i have 500 of them at home if you need any. >> but it's one of those things where we couldn't make this product with that connector. but let me tell you, the product is so worth it. >> and that's the thing about apple, sleek isn't cheap. those white earbuds announce to the world you have a couple of hundred dollars to spend. it will buy you a product that works like no other. and the apple products you'll see are the ones people bring in from home. they're usually right there on the desk next to the computers we have to use for work. apple prides itself on being equal parts computer company and religion. apple fans get whipped up into a stampeding froth with every new product release. customers famously camp outdoors and then emerge triumphant,
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emotionally spent. journalists flock to those dramatic product rollouts as if the ceo is going to reveal stone tablets, instead of the kind with scratch-proof glass. and the culture of secrecy is designed to keep it that way. why are you institutionally so secretive? how is it that you know how many times i've listened to a bob dylan song or any other song and yet we never get to know anything about you guys? >> we think holding our product plan secret is very important because people love surprises. >> this was one surprise apple could not have loved, the new samsung ad campaign. it's blistering, bold, damaging. it portrays apple products and people who love them as somehow passe and uncool, even desperate. it's a blunt instrument disguised as satire and it's a frontal attack on a ant that
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would have been unthinkable not too long ago. >> what did you just do? >> just sent my playlist. >> the galaxy s3. when do you think we'll be able to do that thing? >> hey. >> hey, mom, dad. >> thanks for holding our spot. >> you guys have fun. home by midnight, you two. >> the next big thing is already here. >> this ises the line for apps. >> the unmistakable message right there, apple products are for your parents. samsung makes the really cool stuff and they're much more casu about it. they came along and tried to paint those with white earbuds, apple users as losers. they're trying to paint their product as cool and yours as not cool. is this thermonuclear war? >> we love our customers. and we'll fight to defend them with anyone.
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is it thermonuclear war? the reality is that we love competition at apple. we think it makes us all better. but we want people to invent their own stuff. >> he's talking about the legal fight between apple and samsung. they've sued each other in courts around the world over patent infringements. apple won the last round in the u.s. when a jury ruled samsung owed them $1 billion for stealing ideas. samsung was back in court just today appealing the judgment. sometimes the business of making pretty things is ugly. how tough is your business? how surprised would we civilians be at how rough it gets? >> it's tough. it's very tough. you have people trying to hack into systems on a constant basis. you have people trying to enlist confidential information about future product plans.
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all of these things are things that we constantly fight. >> and then there's tim cook's larger challenge, the man who r rhapsodyizes about it. you have a grindingly simple and normal american life. when you and i as kids would go to a neighbor's house and see under their new tv sony trinitron, that would tell us something instantly. and you're smiling. and that brand lasted up until walkman, diskman. but then, fast-forward to today, it's less meaningful. how do you not become sony with all apologies to sony? >> we're very simple people at apple. we focus on making the world's best products and enriching
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people's lives. i think some companies, maybe even the one that you mentioned, maybe they decided that they could do everything. we have to make sure at apple that we stay true, to focus, to laser focus, we can only do great things a few times. only on a few products. >> but will the next great thing be apple's long-rumored move into the television business? >> it's a market that we have intense interest in and it's a market that we see that has been left behind. >> what does he mean by that? tim cook goes on to talk about that. we'll show you as much as he's willing to say about what might be the next big thing when we come back with part two of our interview right after this break.
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welcome back. this is the first time apple's tim cook has done this, a full-on television interview. spoken in any detail about the death of the legendary co-founder steve jobs. and here now, part two of our
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in august 2011, tim cook was made ceo of apple. steve jobs reduced his own role to chairman of the board. then less than two months later, he was gone, after a long fight with pancreatic cancer. >> it's so great to see so many of you here today. >> it was tim cook who was chosen to preside over the private memorial service for apple employees. thousands of people gathered as the face of the founder gazed down upon them from the side of the building. >> it was the saddest time of my life. >> did you know how sick he was? >> i always thought that he would bounce back because he always did. and it wasn't until extremely close to the end that i reached sort of an intellectual point that he couldn't bounce this
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time. >> big boss coming through, people, look alive. it's his company to run now. and after the peaceful transition of power, he was quickly forced into crisis footing because of the situation in china, where so many apple products are assembled by skilled workers. there's been trouble and cook traveled there after harsh criticism of poor working conditions and low wages. the situation was later parodied on "snl" by cast members who actually make up the heart of apple's demographic. >> oh, no, talk about apple now. it's no work, right? you want starbucks to take you to duncan dkin' donuts? >> china remains a major issue for apple and tim cook seems to have a ready answer for it. why can't you be a made in america company? >> this iphone, as a matter of fact, the engine in here is made
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in america. and not only are the engines in here made in america, but engines are made in america and are exported. the glass on this phone is made in kentucky. so we've been working for years on doing more and more in the united states. next year, we will do one of our mac lines in the united states. >> let's say our constitution was a little different and barack obama called you in tomorrow and said, get everybody out of china and do whatever you have to do, make these, make everything you make in the united states. what would that do to the price of this device? >> honestly, it's not so much about price. it's about the skills, et cetera. over time, there are skills that are associated with manufacturing that have left the view out. >> cook says apple has already created more than 600,000 jobs here in the u.s., that includes
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everything from research and development to retail to a solar power farm. he also points to the app industry, another one of those that didn't exist before apple came along. all those icons and all those downloads employ a lot of people. >> all this side is ipods here. >> it was such a different world just six years ago when we sat down with steve jobs for one of his last television interviews. he showed us around apple's flagship store on fifth avenue in new york which six years later is still the big glass granddaddy of them all. back then, steve jobs was as usual all about the future. >> we've got some really great ideas of the products we're going to build next year and the year after that we're working really hard on. i think our focal length is always forward. >> he was all black turtleneck and glass frames and mystical and mysterious. forgive me, you and i could work
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at a best buy, we're plain-looking people. you're a much more conventional, seeming, guy. but there's obviously brainpower he saw in you that you brought to bear on this job. >> i'm not sure a conventional person would have come to apple at that point in time. almost everyone i know thought i was crazy. >> that's because apple was on the ropes back in 1998. steve jobs had just come back and was trying to steal cook away from compaq computer, a name that was actually vibrant back then. >> i'd just gotten to compaq, just gotten to houston. i agreed to come out and talk. five minutes into the talk with him, i'm wanting to throw caution to the wind and come to apple. and the rest is history. >> tim cook's personal history starts to robertsdale, alabama, the son of a gulf coast shipyard
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worker. he went off to auburn and then to duke for an mba. among what little else we know about him, he's got a lot of bob dylan on his ipod and bobby kennedy was his hero. he still has his accent from the south. these days, he finds solitude in the west. for all the folks trying to get to know you and figure you out, where do you go when you need to go someplace? >> i work out. i'm in the gym about 5:00 a.m. every morning. if some free time, i go to a national park. i love getting in nature. and so these are the things that calm my mind and allow me to think clearly. that's what i do. >> this is kind of your television coming-out. and i'm glad you did this. does this mean you have reached a cruising altitude? >> there's no -- maybe for other ceos. there's no cruising altitude at
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apple. >> tim cook is a manager with a vision who is following in the footsteps of a visionary-turned-manager. while he has to worry about global issues like the counterfeiters who instantly turn out fake copies of every new apple product, cook has to keep one eye on the stock price constantly and the other on the future. and that sure sounds like it means tv. what can apple do for television-watching? what do you know that is going to change the game that we don't know yet? >> it's a market that we see that has been left behind. i used to watch "the jetsons" as a kid. >> absolutely. >> i loved "the jetsons." we're living "the jetsons" with this. >> george, you'll never guess what happened. >> facetime is "the jetsons" but
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television is still television. >> it's an area of interest. i can't say more than that. >> i'm not shocked. ten years from now, americans are going to be amazed that they ever -- give us broad generalities. what's the new thing? it's okay to tell me. let this stuff out. whatever you're thinking of for the future. it's all right. >> our whole goal in life is to give you something you didn't know you wanted and then once you get it, you can't imagine your life without it. >> starting with? >> and you can count on apple doing that. >> oh, frustrating. so television is an area of intense interest, that's almost a declaration in apple speak, clearly this is an ongoing conversation. in fact, we're going to keep talkinabout it tonight. 11:30 eastern, we're going to talk about it in a live stream.
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i'll be joined by the editor of "the verge." we'll answer your questions. it's all on our website tonight. hope you can join us for that. we'll take a break now. up next, it's a situation every family needs to face. when we come back, some remarkable lessons about one of life's most important conversations. ♪ she's not famous. ♪ she's never been on a red carpet. ♪ but she's the star of my life. [ female announcer ] kay jewelers presents a new collection from hollywood's premier jewelry designer -- neil lane designs. my designs are inspired by hollywood's glamorous past. [ female announcer ] hand-crafted diamond rings, earrings, and necklaces with a vintage look. at kay, the number-one jewelry store in america. for the star in your life. ♪ every kiss begins with kay
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you're watching "rock center." we're here in studio 3b in new york. next up, peter jackson, the director of "the hobbit." him, helped to make him who he is today. ann curry will tell us how. that and more next. [ female announcer ] philadelphia cream cheese. made with fresh milk and real cream. it makes your holiday recipes, everyone's holiday favorites.
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you did it, daddy. we did it. ♪ every kiss begins with kay our next report here is one of those things a lot of american families should see because it's about a moment in life all families face. tonight, you'll see something remarkable going on at a hospital in wisconsin that has developed a humane and life-affirming way to face what we all eventually face and that is the end of life. just as remarkable as you'll see are the families who allowed harry smith to join them in the conversation. >> reporter: people come to the emergency room to have their lives saved. >> resuscitation complete. >> reporter: but as americans live longer and longer, the emergency room is not the best place to begin a conversation about how you want to live the rest of your life or even how you want to die. >> do you know where you are? >> reporter: tough choices about which treatments and how much
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treatment become a guessing game, often powered by guilt. >> one family member may say, no, we need to do this, we have to do everything. and another family member that is saying, we just have to make her comfortable. >> reporter: but that disagreement rarely happens in what might just be the best place to die in america, lacrosse, wisconsin. here in this hospital, an astounding 96% of the patients have a game plan for life and death. it's called an advanced directive. it starts with a very tough, very honest meeting they call next steps. >> tell me what you know about paul's condition. >> he's not going to get better. and we know that. >> paul, what do you hope for with your current plan of care? >> give me as much time as i can get, but keep me comfortable.
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>> reporter: paul and gene pearson have been married 21 years, a second marriage for both. together they have six children. he's a 73-year-old retired architect. she was an interior designer. this is what real love and devotion looks like. >> if you were having a good day, what would that day be like? >> i'd probably be fishing. >> you'd be fishing. >> and she'd be with me. she's more important to me than anything. >> reporter: paul pearson has inoperable lung cancer. he and jean don't want there to be any doubt about how he wants to live out the rest of his life. >> this discussion -- >> reporter: in this meeting, run by jack si, a nurse practitioner, paul and jean face their decisions head-on. we were there to witness the process, which is as emotional as it is profound. >> paul, what worries you about your illness? what fears do you have?
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>> breathing is going to be a probl problem. and probably having to go into a nursing home. >> what about going to a nursing home? >> being stuck there. i don't want to be a burden to her. >> reporter: paul is emphatic. he doesn't want to linger or suffer. and he is not afraid to say so by refusing treatment. >> what i'm going to do now is read through these situations. if i have a serious complication from my cancer or treatment for my cancer so that i was facing a prolonged hospital stay and my chance of living through the complication was low, for example, only 5 out of 100 patients would live -- >> i would deny treatment. >> it was expected that i would
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never either walk or talk or both and i would require 24-hour nursing care -- >> it would be the same answer. >> it was expected that i would never know who i was or who i was with -- >> same thing. >> and i'm in agreement with that. >> reporter: looking ahead to the end of life is a journey that takes no small amount of courage. and what happens in this meeting is as important for jean as it is for paul. >> this is really a gift that you're giving to your family because at some point, if they're needing to make a decision, they can go back to this and say, yes, this is hard, this is difficult, but this is what mom or this is what dad really wanted. >> take a deep breath for me. >> reporter: one of the things they've learned here is all this talking about how you want to
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die, in many cases, helps people live longer and incredibly enough costs less. at gunderson, patients in the last six months of life spent half as days in the hospital as the national average. but this doctor led the gunderson team that came up with this better way to die. >> when we are dealing with patients who have getting sicker, they reach a point where they know there isn't much more, they say, i'd like for you to keep me comforble. the cost f of care goes down because we're not doing all these expensive things they don't want. >> some people will say, it looks like they're trying to talk people out of care. >> that's not the philosophy. we really want to understand the patient's perspective. we want to understand the patient's values. >> reporter: and planning ahead has another benefit -- peace.
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when it's time to go, there is little rancor or remorse. >> hello, eva. >> reporter: while we were at gunderson, we met the foote family, just the week before, 90-year-old eva foote was at a fair. >> i know what you wanted for her was for her to be comfortable. >> reporter: but severe stomach pain brought her to the emergency room. eva had a life-threatening blodt clot in her intestines. they had a roadmap which led them to forego surgery because doctors found eva's chances of regaining anything close to her former health were next to none. your parents led you know ahead of time what they wanted to do. >> yes. >> knowing ahead of time it takes a load off the family. >> reporter: two days later, eva passed away peacefully. her wishes honored.
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for paul pearson's children, the plan was tough to take at first. but now that they know what he wants, they have accepted it. >> it does put everybody at ease. >> to know that there is this plan in place. >> yeah, it really does. all of us can be prepared for each step as it comes. >> reporter: the pearsons don't feel like victims of their circumstances. in fact, just the opposite. the process has helped paul decide how he wants to live the rest of his life. on the schedule, more fishing and historical re-enactments. jean and paul have been going for years, and now is not the time to stop. how helpful is it to have these conversations, to go through the scenarios ahead of time? >> this gives us that advantage that we don't have to be second-guessing, what should i do? we've already made those
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decisions. and they're hard decisions. but we're okay with them. >> our thanks to harry smith but also to paul and jean pearson who we happen to know are watching our broadcast at home tonight. they allowed us to join in their life-changing conversation. thank you on our behalf for sharing your bravery. we're back with more right after this. and there are many years ahead. join the millions of members who've chosen an aarp medicare supplement insurance plan insured by unitedhealthcare insurance company. go long.
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welcome back. one of the year's most hotly anticipated movies, "the hobbit," is about to open in america. the story itself laid the groundwork for the hugely successful "lord of the rings" trilogy, which director peter jackson turned into a hugely successful film franchise. but as ann curry found when she visited peter jackson in new zealand, this billion-dollar enterprise really started when a monster movie drove a little boy
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to tears. >> hitchcock's great quote about some people's movies are slices of life. mine are slices of cake. that sums me up. i'm someone that can happily buy a ticket and go to a film and come away thinking, wow, that was cool. those are the sorts of films that i hope i'm making. >> reporter: big slice of cake, chocolaty, with lots of frosting. >> and quite a few calories. >> reporter: you may not recognize his face but you know his movies. sir peter jackson, yes, he's a sir, is the creative genius behind "king kong" and "the lord of the rings." now a decade after he directed the trilogy comes "the hobbit," filmed here in his native country new zealand. why did you fight so hard to keep the filming of this movie "the hobbit" in new zealand?
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>> my boys wanted to make my films here. i just regard myself as a new zealand filmmaker. i don't feel compelled to go somewhere else to do what i want to do. >> reporter: we caught up with jackson just before "the hobbit's" world premiere. >> it's the greatest privilege in the world to have your hobby be your profession. it's a gift. i have to keep reminding myself of that when it's tough and tiring. >> reporter: we got him to sit down and take a rare break. >> last night, i had a look at the movie for the first time as a complete finished run of a film. >> reporter: what did you think? >> it was okay. a few little tweaks to do today, though. >> reporter: still? and the premiere, as we speak, is tomorrow. >> yeah, well, it's tomorrow. it's not today. >> reporter: why do you have this reputation for always changing things at the last minute? >> because you can always make it better. i could happily work on "the hobbit" for another six months. it's never perfect.
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and so we just simply take every available minute, second, up until the time that the film has to be taken away from us. >> reporter: in complicating his perfectionist tendencies, jackson is having to follow the biggest success of his career. "the lord of the rings" earned him three academy awards. did you feel a pressure to outdo yourself? >> it's the thing that made me hesitant to do "the hobbit" is that i didn't want to find myself competing with a film i'd made earlier. what i ended up doing, i think, was embracing the fact that "the hobbit" is a very different tone of story. it was written for children. it has a whimsy and a charm and a humor that doesn't exist really in "lord of the rings". >> reporter: it was his own childhood in a small seaside community that shaped his future. born in 1961 to english immigrants, joan and bill jackson, a housewife and a civil
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servant. he was an only child. at age 9, he woke up to the power of film when he found himself crying watching this scene in the original "king kong." what was it about that movie? >> it was an almost empathy for this innocent character taken from his home and dragged into the 20th century civilization. the film affected me to the point that it was the time that i decided that i want to do that. >> reporter: without any formal training, jackson began making his own movies, using a super 8 camera that a neighbor gave his family. how did you figure out how to make a film? >> you learn from watching other films. and then there was a magazine caught "famous monsters of filmland." that magazine inspired more nerdy young kids to become a filmmaker than anything else. that magazine was responsible
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for warping a lot of young minds. >> reporter: so reading that magazine, you came up with all kinds of ideas. and it sounds like your family had to suffer a great deal for your art. >> well, my mother had to give up her oven so i could cook foam latex monsters. our little house would have horrific smell of rubbery sulfur, vulcanized rubber in it for days after i did a piece in the oven. >> reporter: his parents let him drop out of high school to take a job to pay for film equipment. before long, he was making flasher films starting with "bad taste" where he and his friends made up the cast and crew. >> come on in for a cup of tea. >> reporter: followed by a dark comedy with puppets called "meet the feebles." and a horror movie "brain dead." throughout it all, his parents'
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support never wavered. >> there was these incredibly gruesome movies i made, those were the movies my parents came to watch and somehow still managed to be very proud. you feel a passion to do this which in my in this case was rather odd, make mobsters and make little movies and cut them together and screen them on a sheet on my bedroom wall. if you have parents that don't question it, that don't regard it as being odd or strange, don't make you feel like a weirdo, i think that's really important. >> reporter: his breakout film was "heavenly creatures" and his own version of "king kong" was hugely successful. but the "rings" trilogy put him on the map. and peter jackson has had a cameo in every movie he's directed, from "bad taste" to "king kong" and even the "rings" movies.
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in his latest film, he plays a dwarf. i understand there was a time when you did not like to wear shoes and would only wear really shorts. >> i still don't really wear shoes. i wore shoes today just for you. for the last six or eight weeks, i haven't worn shoes. >> reporter: the person you don't see is fran walsh, jackson's partner who stays private to give their two children a normal life. they co-wrote all of the "rings" and "the hobbit" movies. but few know her influence or that she wrote and directed one of the "rings'" most iconic scenes. this schizophrenic talk with the character's self. >> it's probably the most famous scene in the film. she should direct more movies. i trust fran more than i trust anyone else in the world. >> reporter: with her by his
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side, he's making a movie-making empire in wellington. with special effects facilities, sound stages and a state-of-the-art production out, it's here that jackson pioneers was called performs capture which is how gollum is brought to life and even more so in "the hobbit" as he see in this exclusive clip. >> what we've been able to do in the last intervening ten years is build a lot more muscle systems for his face. so basically what you're trying to do with performance capture is to allow every nuance of what andy does to be accurately transferred to the gollum puppet. >> reporter: you smile. it's fun for you. >> yeah, yeah, creating an emotional character who's completely unofficial. >> reporter: jackson invited us behind the scenes. i recognize this scene. >> oh, yes, the trolls. >> reporter: and shared some secrets. as he's moving, that's what's happening on the screen.
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how does that work exactly? >> all these guys i cover in these little dots. the spoon he has, all of these are being photographed live by a series of cameras all around the room. between them, all the cameras have a discussion and figures out who talks to who. >> reporter: but how does he capture characters at vastly different heights? he invited me on screen to explain. >> you want me to be gandolf. >> i'm bilbo. what i have to do is if i look at the screen and i just point with my hands and -- that's where your eyes are, i get a mark up on the ceiling right there. >> reporter: so your eyes are there. i'm looking there. this is tough on the actor. >> i'm walking around and glancing back up at you and i'm going past you.
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it gets confusing because now we have to turn all the way around. and now we're really in trouble. >> reporter: oh, dear. at the same time, a lot of the film is low tech, literally low. >> on the days that we haven't got time to do any of this, if you were gandolf, you'd stand on a box. if i'm a hobbit, i'm on my knees. if you go behind ann's shoulder and ann look down at me, that's exactly how he did a lot of the film was done like this. >> reporter: "the hobbit" is in 3-d and it's the first film ever shot at 48 frames per second, a more realistic look that will be tested in some theaters. but while jackson pushes technology, he doesn't forget his predecessors. and look closely, he's holding the structure of the model used in the original "king kong". >> this is one of the most precious things that i own.
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because the motion capture stage we have is just through the doors there, i wanted to make sure that everyone that comes into the stage is reminded of how animation began. the connection between me and that 9-year-old boy watching this movie in black and white on tv for the very first time, that connection is so close. >> reporter: maybe it's the boy in him, but he also owns the car from the film "chitty chitty bang bang." but none of that compares to what he has in his own back yard. >> they get smashed up and taken to the dump. fran and i are sentimentally attached. we asked, can we keep the set? and they said, yes. so we dug a whole in a hill and put it into the hill and covered it over with dirt. and it's our sort of guesthouse now.
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elijah woodard's stayed there. >> reporter: there's a big, round green door. >> exactly as it is in the movie. it has all the props from the movie, too. when we had to recreate it for "the hobbit," we had to build a brand-new one because that one was buried in the hill. so we had to recreate it. i couldn't throw that one away either. >> reporter: why would he? after all, peter jackson has devoted a quarter f of his life by bringing it to the big screen. do you think you'll look back on these films, these six films, eventually, as your greatest legacy? >> it's an interesting question. obviously if i said, yes, i'd be saying -- i'm assuming i'm never going to make anything that people regard with quite as good as that. but the realistic question is
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that may well be the case. >> great story. our thanks to ark, a. we wanted to let you know, ann will interview the cast of "the hobbit" tomorrow morning on "today." we're back with more right after this. [ male announcer ] it's that time of year again. time for citi price rewind. because your daughter really wants that pink castle thing. and you really don't want to pay more than you have to. only citi price rewind automatically searches for the lowest price. and if it finds one, you get refunded the difference. just use your citi card and register your purchase online. have a super sparkly day! ok.
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we wanted to let you know about a special story we're airing on the broadcast next week. this warehouse that have shocked an entire city. kate snow reports on the
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we will meet the prosecutor who is fighting for justice in the case. and next week, we'll get back to ending the broadcast in a proper way with our look back at the news of the week. but for us and for now, however, for everybody who worked hard to bring you this week's broadcast, thank you for being here with us. don't forget tonight's live stream on the website about the tim cook interview, the future of apple. that's 11:30, 10:30 central. good night for now. your late local news starts now.

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